What’s the impact and opportunity of Blockchain Technology, Cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin for a country?

I was invited as a keynote speaker at the Oman Blockchain Symposium in Muscat. Here are a few take aways and thoughts from this government initiative.

We’ve all seen that #Cryptocurrencies have the ability to create alternative value transfer mechanisms – empower the Internet of Value. On top of that #blockchain technology itself can create new services and reduce the need for traditional, centralised, high-power processing platforms – empower efficiency gains, new -#eGovernment applications, #eVoting and #DigitalIdenty.

For a country and local government there are questions about pragmatic project opportunities such as:

– Where does Blockchain technology – open as well as private blockhains – helps a government to increase value and services for their citizen?
– What are the benefits to create a Crypto-Currency for the country? Is there a need to act now as Singapore, Russia, UK and Dubai have announced their local crypto assets?
– What are the needs for a thriving ecosystem and infrastructure? Does each country need its own #mining infrastructure, server environment and even a local crypto-currency exchange? Will a country enable, support or ban to transfer local currency #fiatmoney intro #cryptocurrencies?

So how will Blockchain benefit on a country level?

As of today we can say that there is no perfect solution or benchmark yet although there are lots of activities and projects. It’s uncharted territory although there are some pioneers. And it‘s a field for exploration, trial and error and startup thinking although it’s all about traditional value and industries.

Examples of Governments using Blockchain Technology

– On December 4, 2017, the Moscow Government has announced to use Blockchain Technology for their next election. This eVoting system has been released as an Open-Sources Blockchain Voting Tool. In an official statement the Government said: “The introduction of this technology will make the voting in the [Active Citizen initiative] even more open: it will be difficult to say that the administration incorrectly interprets the answers, changes the results of the voting when the citizens themselves can verify this information.”

– October 15, 2017, Russia announced to introduce the CryptoRubble, as a country wide regulated and controlled blockchain based cryptocurrency.

– In February 2017, China has announced that they are working on its own national cryptocurrency. Already in 2014 the People’s Bank of China had been working internally on concepts of a nationwide cryptocurrency for China.